According to an extensive study commissioned by the Global Privacy Enforcement Network the privacy practices of app publishers often leave something to be desired. Not only did 75% of the 1,211 sampled apps seek permission to access smartphone functions / user data (see chart for details), but many of them failed to communicate their privacy policy in a transparent and easily understandable way.

In 59% of the cases the respective app publisher failed to inform the user about the app's data collection pre-installation, and nearly one third of the sampled apps sought permission to access information that the researchers felt was irrelevant to the apps' functionality. In the end, no more than a sobering 15% of the examined apps were found to be sufficiently transparent about what information they would gather and how it would be used.